Disable Deck.ly in Tweetdeck

Twitter is 140 characters, and that is it. Everyone knows that. But Tweetdeck (my social media management tool of choice) has taken upon itself to make it possible for users to create longer tweets with their new service, Deck.ly. This means that if you write a tweet longer than 140 characters, Tweetdeck users will see the entire tweet message, but the rest of the world will see a link at the end of your tweet to see the rest, even if “the rest” is only a 141st character.

Now if the entire world was using Tweetdeck for Twitter, this wouldn’t be as big of a deal. But according to ClientoPedia, Tweetdeck only owns 4.97% of the market share.

Unnecessary clicking equals bad usability which means that 95.03% of Twitter users could now see links within tweets that link them to a longer tweet, instead of a helpful article, or whatever else one might generally link to in a tweet. The funny thing is, I’ve seen more Tweetdeck users complain about this new service, than non. I don’t know if Tweetdeck hopes this will somehow bring more users to their service, but I don’t see that happening, especially since Tweetdeck users started a support thread to ask for the ability to turn off Deck.ly.

Deck.ly Opt-Out Setting

(Click to Enlarge)

Tweetdeck has already responded with an update that gives you the option to turn of Deck.ly. After you’ve installed this update, go to your settings panel, and uncheck the option labeled “Use Deck.ly for sending long updates”.

It will be interesting to see how long this service lasts now that we’re able to stop using it.

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6 comments on “Disable Deck.ly in Tweetdeck”

I will follow your instructions right away!
Even if tweetdeck had 99% coverage, we’d have to cut of deck.li: wih allowing ever longer tweets, you cut out the heart of Twitter. The USP is that it forces people to get to the point, and if you leave that there’s no added value to blogging, mail etc.